Kids Trust Attractive Adults More Than Ugly Ones

Adults with attractive faces are more likely to win the trust of children, psychologists have said. Which explains why my kids burst into tears whenever I walk into the room.

How do scientists know this? They tested 32 – yes, just 32, so hardly 'scientific' - four and five-year-olds and showed them 12 photos of women aged between 18 and 29.

Both boys and girls were more likely to believe answers assigned to pictures of pretty women.

The photos had previously been selected from 56 original images by a panel of university students who rated their attractiveness.

Only the most attractive and unattractive were presented to the children. Lead researcher Dr Igor Bascandziev, from Harvard University in the US, said: "When learning about the world, children rely heavily on information provided to them by other people.

"Previous studies have shown children can be influenced by a range of factors such as whether the adult was correct in the past or if they are familiar to them.

"Our study wanted to examine whether children would trust an attractive stranger over an unattractive stranger."

He added: "We see from the results that children and especially girls have more trust in attractive faces, even though there are no obvious reasons why people with more attractive faces would be more knowledgeable about object labels."